Shall Women Have the Right to Vote ? 


ADDRESS 

BY 

WENDELL PHILLIPS 

AT 

WORCESTER, MASS. 

1851 

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Republished By ^ . 

The Equal Franchise Society of Pennsylvania 
1912 


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Shall Women Have the Right to Vote ? 


ADDRESS 

BY 

WENDELL PHILLIPS 


WORCESTER, MASS. 


1851 

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Republished By 

The Equal Franchise Society of Pennsylvania 
1912 







By Tranirfear 

JAN 9 1924 




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FOREWORD. 


A CHINESE philosopher, a disciple of Laotse, once 
said: “Man is like a child born at midnight who 
when he sees the sunrise, thinks there was no yester¬ 
day.” There are many persons in the community even to¬ 
day, who regard the present movement in favor of equal 
suffrage as a transitory, hysterical agitation of a demagogic 
nature, of which the impulse has been received in the United 
States from the outbreaks of militant partisans in England. 
In the minds of these persons, the movement in the past is 
vaguely associated with eccentric clothing and more or less 
ridicule; in the present, with the restlessness of what is re¬ 
garded as an unwomanly demonstration. 

While believers in equal suffrage in this country have 
taken advantage of the interest aroused in every part of the 
world by the news from the militant suffragists of England, 
the movement can claim a respectable history and a fairly long 
pedigree. If in the last century the pioneers in the demand 
for “Women’s Rights” in England found strength in the 
support of such men as John Stuart Mill, their American 
sisters found among others an outspoken champion in another 
clear thinker—Wendell Phillips. While the progress made 
toward legal equality since he raised his voice against the un¬ 
fairness and inconsistency of the law, has made a few of his 
remarks seem obsolete, it seems as though those very steps of 
progress were worth bringing forward at this time—if only to 
measure the ground covered since those days, thus pointing 


out a hope for the future. It took fifty-five years to establish 
the principal of equal guardianship of children in Massachu¬ 
setts, and somewhat less time in Pennsylvania. In Maryland 
it does not yet exist. But the principle of equality has at last 
been established to that extent. Progress is slow; the rate 
of its speed however is perceptibly increasing. The principle 
of equality is generally admitted—the question of expediency 
still faces us. 

In reprinting Wendell Phillips’ admirable address, the in¬ 
tention therefore, is to make clear the relation of the present 
movement to its historical background. While listening to 
the words of the strong man who, in 1851, had the courage to 
support an unpopular cause in the interest of justice and fair 
play, it is hoped that encouragement will be given to those 
who today are fighting in the ranks. 


S. Y. S. 


EXTRACT 


FROM 

GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS’ EULOGY 
ON WENDELL PHILLIPS 

BEFORE THE 

Municipal Authorities of Boston, April 18 , 1884 . 


H IS powerful presentation of the justice and reason of 
the political equality of women, at Worcester, in 
1851, more than any other single impulse, launched 
that question upon the sea of popular controversy. In the 
general statement of principle nothing has been added to that 
discourse; in vivid and effective eloquence of advocacy it has 
never been surpassed. All the arguments for independence 
echoed John Adams in the Continental Congress. All the 
pleas for applying the American principle of representation to 
the wives and mothers of American citizens echo the elo¬ 
quence of Wendell Phillips at Worcester. 




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WOMAN’S RIGHTS. 


This speech was made at a Convention held at Worcester, on the 
15th and 16th of October, 1851, upon the following resolutions, which 
were offered by Mr. Phillips:— 

“1. Resolved, That while we would not undervalue other 
methods, the right of suffrage for women is, in our opinion, the corner¬ 
stone of this enterprise, since we do not seek to protect woman, but 
rather to place her in a position to protect herself. 

“2. Resolved, That it will be woman’s fault if, the ballot once in 
her hand, all the barbarous, demoralizing, and unequal laws relating 
to marriage and property do not speedily vanish from the statute book; 
and while we acknowledge that the hope of a share in the higher pro¬ 
fessions and profitable employments of society is one of the strongest 
motives to intellectual culture, we know, also, that an interest in 
political questions is an equally powerful stimulus; and we see, beside, 
that we do our best to insure education to an individual, when we 
put the ballot into his hands; it being so clearly the interest of the 
community that one upon whose decisions depend its welfare and safety 
should both have free access to the best means of education, and be 
urged to make use of them. 

“3. Resolved, That we do not feel called upon to assert or estab¬ 
lish the equality of the sexes, in an intellectual or any other point of view. 
It is enough for our argument that natural and political justice, 
and the axioms of English and American liberty, alike determine that 
rights and burdens, taxation and representation, should be coextensive; 
hence women, as individual citizens, liable to punishment for acts 
which the laws call criminal, or to be taxed in their labor and property 
for the support of government, have a self-evident and indisputable 
right, identically the same right that men have, to a direct voice in the 
enactment of those laws and the formation of that government. 

“4. Resolved, That the democrat, or reformer, who denies suf¬ 
frage to women, is a democrat only because he was not born a noble. 


7 



and one of those levellers w^ho are willing to level only down to them¬ 
selves. 

“5. Resolved, That while political and natural justice accord civil 
equality to woman; while great thinkers of every age, from Plato to 
Condorcet and Mill, have supported their claim; while voluntary as¬ 
sociations, religious and secular, have been organized on this basis— 
there is yet a favorite argument against it, that no political community 
or nation ever existed in which women have not been in a state of 
political inferiority. But, in reply, we remind our opponents that the 
same fact has been alleged, with equal truth, in favor of slavery; has 
been urged against freedom of industry, freedom of conscience^ and 
the freedom of the press; none of these liberties having been thought 
compatible with a well-ordered state, until they had proved their pos¬ 
sibility by springing into existence as facts. Besides, there is no dif¬ 
ficulty in understanding why the subjection of woman has been a 
uniform custom, when we recollect that we are just emerging from the 
ages in which might has been always right. 

“6. Resolved, That, so far from denying the overwhelming social 
and civil influence of women, we are fully aware of its vast extent; 
aware, with Demosthenes, that ‘measures which the statesman has 
meditated a whole year may be overturned in a day by a woman’; 
and for this very reason we proclaim it the very highest expediency to 
endow her with full civil rights, since only then will she exercise this 
mighty influence under a just sense of her duty and responsibility; 
the history of all ages bearing witness that the only safe course for 
nations is to add open responsibility wherever there already exists 
unobserved power. 

“7. Resolved, That we deny the right of any portion of the species 
to decide for another portion, or of any individual to decide for an¬ 
other individual, what is and what is not its ‘proper sphere’; that the 
proper sphere for all human beings is the largest and highest to which 
they are able to attain; what this is cannot be ascertained without 
complete liberty of choice; woman, therefore, ought to choose for 
herself what sphere she will fill, what education she will seek, and 
what employment she will follow; and not be held bound to accept, 
in submission, the rights, the education, and the sphere which man 
thinks proper to allow her. 

“8. Resolved, That we hold these truths to be self-evident: ‘That 
all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator 
with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and 
the pursuit of happiness; that, to secure these rights, governments 

8 


are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent 
of the governed’; and we charge that man with gross dishonesty or 
ignorance who shall contend that ‘men,’ in the memorable document 
from which we quote, does not stand for the human race; that ‘life, 
liberty, and the pursuit of happiness’ are the ‘inalienable rights’ of 
half only of the human species; and that, by ‘the governed,’ whose 
consent is affirmed to be the only source of just power, is meant that 
half of mankind only who, in relation to the other, have hitherto as¬ 
sumed the character of governors. 

“9. Resolved^ That we see no weight in the argument, that it is 
necessary to exclude women from civil life because domestic cares 
and political engagements are incompatible; since we do not see the 
fact to be so in the case of man; and because if the incompatibility 
be real, it will take care of itself, neither men nor women needing 
any law to exclude them from an occupation when then have under¬ 
taken another incompatible with it. Second, we see nothing in the 
assertion that women themselves do not desire a change, since we 
assert that superstitious fears, and dread of losing men’s regard, 
smother all frank expression on this point; and further, if it be their 
real wish to avoid civil life, laws to keep them out of it are absurd, 
no legislator having ever yet thought it necessary to compel people by 
law to follow their own inclination. 

“10. Resolved, That it is as absurd to deny all women their civil 
rights because the cares of household and family take up all the time 
of some, as it would be to exclude the whole male sex from Congress, 
because some men are sailors, or soldiers, in active service, or mer¬ 
chants, whose business requires all their attention and energies.” 


I N drawing up some of these resolutions, I have used, 
very freely, the language of a thoughtful and profound 
article in the, Westminster Reviezv. It is a review of the 
proceedings of our recent Convention in this city, and states 
with singular clearness and force the leading arguments for 
our reform, and the grounds of our claim in behalf of woman. 

I rejoice to see so large an audience gathered to consider 
this momentous subject. It was well described by Mrs. Rose 


9 



as the most magnificent reform that has yet been launched 
upon the world. It is the first organized protest against the 
injustice which has brooded over the character and the destiny 
of one-half of the human race. Nowhere else, under any 
circumstances, has a demand ever yet been made for the 
liberties of one whole half of our race. It is fitting that we 
should pause and consider so remarkable and significant a 
circumstance; that we should discuss the question involved 
with the seriousness and deliberation suitable to such an 
enterprise. It strikes, indeed, a great and vital blow at the 
whole social fabric of every nation; but this, to my mind, is 
no argument against it. The time has been when it was the 
duty of the reformer to show cause why he appeared to dis¬ 
turb the quiet of the world. But during the discussion of 
the many reforms that have been advocated, and which have 
more or less succeeded, one after another,—freedom of the 
lower classes, freedom of food, freedom of the press, freedom 
of thought, reform in penal legislation, and a thousand other 
matters,—it seems to me to have been proved conclusively, 
that government commenced in usurpation and oppression; 
that liberty and civilization, at present, are nothing else than 
the fragments of rights which the scaffold and the stake have 
wrung from the strong hands of the usurpers. Every step 
of progress the world has made has been from scaffold to 
scaffold, and from stake to stake. It would hardly be exag¬ 
geration to say, that all the great truths relating to society 
and government have been first heard in the solemn protests 
of martryed patriotism, or the loud cries of crushed and 
starving labor. The law has been always wrong. Govern¬ 
ment began in tyranny and force, began in the feudalism of 
the soldier and the bigotry of the priest; and the ideas of justice 
and humanity have been fighting their way, like a thunder 
storm, against the organized selfishness of human nature. 


lO 


And this is the last great protest against the wrong of ages. 
It is no argument to my mind, therefore, that the old social 
fabric of the past is against us. 

Neither do I feel called upon to show what woman’s 
proper sphere is. In every great reform, the majority have 
always said to the claimant, no matter what he claimed, ‘‘You 
are not fit for such a privilege.” Luther asked of the Pope 
liberty for the masses to read the Bible. The reply was, that 
it would not be safe to trust the common people with the 
word of God. “Let them try!” said the great reformer; and 
the history of three centuries of development and purity 
proclaims the result. They have tried; and look around you 
for the consequences. The lower classes in France claimed 
their civil rights,—the right to vote, and to direct represen¬ 
tation in the government; but the rich and lettered classes, 
the men of cultivated intellects, cried out, “You cannot be 
made fit.” The answer was, “Let us try.” That France is 
not, as Spain, utterly crushed beneath the weight of a thousand 
years of misgovernment, is the answer to those who doubt the 
ultimate success of this experiment. 

Woman stands now at the same door. She says, “You 
tell me I have no intellect: give me a chance. You tell me 
I shall only embarrass politics: let me try.” The only reply 
is the same stale argument that said to the Jews of Europe, 
“You are fit only to make money; you are not fit for the 
ranks of the army or the halls of Parliament.” How cogent 
the eloquent appeal of Macaulay,—“What right have we to 
take this question for granted? Throw open the doors of this 
House of Commons, throw open the ranks of the imperial 
army, before you deny eloquence to the countrymen of Isaiah 
or valor to the descendants of the Maccabees.” It is the 
same now with us. Throw open the doors of Congress, 
throw open those court-houses, throw wide open the doors of 


II 




your colleges, and give to the sisters of the Motts and the 
Somervilles the same opportunities for culture that men have, 
and let the result prove what their capacity and intellect 
really are. When, I say, w^oman has enjoyed, for as many 
centuries as we have, the aid of books, the discipline of life, 
and the stimulus of fame, it will be the time to begin the 
discussion of these questions.—“What is the intellect of 
woman?” “Is it equal to that of man?” Till then, all such 
discussion is mere beating of the air. 

While it is doubtless true that great minds, in many 
cases, make a way for themselves, spite of all obstacles, 
yet who knows how many Miltons have died “mute and 
inglorious?” However splendid the natural endowment, the 
discipline of life, after all, completes the miracle. The ability 
of Napoleon,—what was it? It grew out of the hope to be 
Caesar or Marlborough,—out of Austerlitz and Jena,—out 
of his battle-fields, his throne, and all the great scenes of that 
eventful life. Open to women the same scenes, immerse her 
in the same great interests and pursuits, and if twenty cen¬ 
turies shall not produce a woman Charlemagne or Napoleon, 
fair reasoning will then allow us to conclude that there is 
some distinctive peculiarty in the intellects of the sexes. 
Centuries alone can lay any fair basis for argument. I 
believe that, on this point, there is a shrinking consciousness 
of not being ready for the battle, on the part of some of the 
stronger sex, as they call themselves; a tacit confession of 
risk to this imagined superiority, if they consent to meet their 
sisters in the lecture-hall or the laboratory of science. My 
proof of it is this: that the mightiest intellects of the race, 
from Plato down to the present time, some of the rarest 
minds of Germany, France and England, have successively 
yielded their assent to the fact that woman is, not perhaps 
identically, but equally, endowed with man in all intellectual 


12 


capabilities. It is generally the second-rate men who doubt,— 
doubt, perhaps, because they fear a fair field: 

“He either fears his fate too much, 

Or his deserts are small, 

Who fears to put it to the touch. 

To gain or lose it all.” 

But I wish especially to direct your attention to the pre¬ 
cise principle which this movement undertakes to urge upon 
the community. We do not attempt to settle what shall be 
the profession, education, or employment of woman. We 
have not that presumption. What we ask is simply this,— 
what all other classes have asked before: Leave it to woman 
to choose for herself her profession, her education, and her 
sphere. We deny to any portion of the species the right to 
prescribe to any other portion its sphere, its education, or its 
rights. We deny the right of any individual to prescribe to 
any other individual his amount of education, or his rights. 
The sphere of each man, of each woman, of each individual, 
is that sphere which he can, with the highest exercise of his 
powers, perfectly fill. The highest act which the human 
being can do, that is the act which God designed him to do. 
All that woman asks through this movement is, to be allowed 
to prove what she can do; to prove it by liberty of choice, 
by liberty of action, the only means by which it ever can be 
settled how much and what she can do. She can reasonably 
say to us: “I have never fathomed the depths of science; 
you have taught that it was unwomanly, and have withdrawn 
from me the means of scientific culture. I have never 
equalled the eloquence of Demosthenes; but you have never 
quickened my energies by holding up before me the crown 
and robe of glory, and the gratitude which I was to win. 
The tools, now, to him or her who can use them. Welcome 
me, henceforth, brother, to your arena; and let facts—not 
theories—settle my capacity, and therefore my sphere.” 


13 


We are not here tonight to assert that woman will enter 
the lists and conquer; that she will certainly achieve all that 
man has achieved; but this we say, ‘‘Clear the lists, and let 
her try.” Some reply, “It will be a great injury to feminine 
delicacy and refinement for woman to mingle in business and 
politics.” I am not careful to answer this objection. Of all 
such objections, on this and kindred subjects, Mrs. President, 
I love to dispose in some such way as this: The broadest 
and most far-sighted intellect is utterly unable to foresee the 
ultimate consequences of any great social change. Ask your¬ 
self, on all such occasions, if there be any element of right 
and wrong in the question, any principle of clear natural 
justice that turns the scale. If so, take your part with the 
perfect and abstract right, and trust God to see that it shall 
prove the expedient. The questions, then, for me, on this 
subject, are these: Has God made woman capable—morally, 
intellectually, and physically—of taking this part in human 
affairs? Then, what God made her able to do, it is a strong 
argument that he intended she should do. Does our sense 
of natural justice dictate that the being who is to suffer under 
laws shall first personally assent to them? that the being 
whose industry government is to burden should have a voice 
in fixing the character and amount of that burden? Then, 
while woman is admitted to the gallows, the jail, and the tax- 
list, we have no right to debar her from the ballot-box. 
“But to go there will hurt that delicacy of character which 
we have always thought peculiarly her grace.” I cannot help 
that. Let Him who created her capable of politics, and 
made it just that she should have a share in them, see to it 
that these rights which he has conferred do not injure the 
being he created. Is it for any human being to trample on 
the laws of justice and liberty, from an alleged necessity of 
helping God govern what he has made? I cannot help God 


govern his world by telling lies, or doing what my con¬ 
science deems unjust. How absurd to deem it necessary that 
any one should do so! When Infinite Wisdom established 
the rules of right and honesty, he saw to it that justice should 
be always the highest expediency. 

The evil, therefore, that some timid souls fear to the 
character of woman, from the exercise of her political rights, 
does not at all trouble me. “Let education form the rational 
and moral being, and nature will take care of the woman.” 
Neither do I feel at all disturbed by those arguments ad¬ 
dressed to us as to the capacity of woman. I know that the 
humblest man and the feeblest has the same civil rights, 
according to the theory of our institutions, as the most gifted. 
It is never claimed that the humblest shall be denied his civil 
right, provided he be a man. No. Intellect, even though it 
reach the Alpine height of a Parker,—ay, setting aside the 
infamy of his conduct, and looking at him only as an instance 
of intellectual greatness, to the height of a Webster,—gets 
no tittle of additional civil right, no one single claim to any 
greater civil privilege than the humblest individual, who 
knows no more than the first elements of his alphabet, pro¬ 
vided that being is a man (I ought to say, a white man). 
Grant, then, that woman is intellectually inferior to man,—it 
settles nothing. She is still a responsible, tax-paying member 
of civil society. We rest our claim on the great, eternal 
principle, that taxation and representation must be coexten¬ 
sive; that rights and burdens must correspond to each other; 
and he who undertakes to answer the argument of this Con¬ 
vention must first answer the whole course of English and 
American history for the last hundred and fifty years. No 
single principle of liberty has been enunciated, from the year 
1688 until now, that does not cover the claim of woman. 
The State has never laid the basis of right upon the distinc- 


15 


tion of sex; and no reason has ever been given, except a 
religious one,—that there are in the records of our religion 
commands obliging us to make woman an exception to our 
civil theories, and, deprive her of that which those theories 
give her. 

Suppose that woman is essentially inferior to man,—she 
still has rights. Grant that Mrs. Norton never could be 
Byron; that Elizabeth Barrett never could have written 
Paradise Lost; that Mrs. Somerville never could be La Place, 
nor Sirani have painted the Transfiguration. What then? 
Does that prove they should be deprived of all civil rights? 
John Smith never will be, never can be, Daniel Webster. 
Shall he, therefore, be put under guardianship, and forbidden 
to vote? 

Suppose woman, though equal, to differ essentially in her 
intellect from man,—is that any ground for disfranchising 
her? Shall the Fultons say to the Raphaels, “Because you 
cannot make steam-engines, therefore you shall not vote?’^ 
Shall the Napoleons or the Washingtons say to the Words¬ 
worths or the Herschels, “Because you cannot lead armies 
and govern states, therefore you shall have no civil rights?” 

Grant that woman’s intellect be essentially different, even 
inferior, if you choose; still, while our civilization allows her 
to hold property, and to be the guardian of her children, she 
is entitled to such education and to such civil rights—voting, 
among the rest—as will enable her to protect both her chil¬ 
dren and her estate. It is easy to indulge in dilettanti specu¬ 
lation as to woman’s sphere and the female intellect; but 
leave dainty speculation, and come down to practical life. 
Here is a young widow; she has children, and ability, if you 
will let her exercise it, to give them the best advantages of 
education, to secure them every chance of success in life; or, 
she has property to keep for them, and no friend to rely 

i6 


on. 


Shall she leave them to sink in the unequal struggles of life? 
Shall she trust their all to any adviser money can buy, in 
order to gratify your taste, and give countenance to your nice 
theories? or shall she use all the powers God has given her 
for those he has thrown upon her protection? If we consult 
common sense and leave theories alone, there is but one 
answer. Such a one can rightfully claim of society all the 
civil privileges, and of fashion all such liberty as will best 
enable her to discharge fully her duties as a mother. 

But woman, it is said, may safely trust all to the watchful 
and generous care of man. She has been obliged to do so 
hitherto. With what result, let the unequal and unjust legis¬ 
lation of all nations answer. In Massachusetts, lately, a man 
married an heiress, worth fifty thousand dollars. Dying, 
about a year after his marriage, he made this remarkably 
generous and manly will. He left these fifty thousand dollars 
to her so long as she should remain his widow! [Loud 
laughter.] These dollars, which he owed entirely to her, 
which were fairly hers, he left to her, after twelve-months’ 
use, on this generous condition, that she should never marry 
again! Ought a husband to have such unlimited control 
over the property of his wife, or over the property which 
they have together acquired? Ought not woman to have a 
voice in determining what the law shall be in regard to the 
property of married persons? Often by her efforts, always 
by her economy, she contributes much to the stock of family 
wealth, and is therefore justly entitled to a voice in the control 
and disposal of it. Neither common sense nor past experience 
encourages her to trust the protection of that right to the 
votes of men. That 

“Mankind is ever weak, 

And little to be trusted; 

If self the wavering balance strike, 

It’s rarely right adjusted.”— 

is true between the sexes, as much as between individuals. 


17 


Make Ihe case our own. Is there any man here willing’ 
to resign his own right to v(3te, and trust his welfare and his 
earnings entirely to the votes of others? Suppose any class 
of men should condescendingly offer to settle for us our 
capacity or our calling,—to vote for us, to choose our sphere 
for us,—how ridiculously impertinent we should consider it! 
Yet few have the good sense to laugh at the consummate 
impertinence with which every bar-room brawler, every third- 
rate scribbler, undertakes to settle the sphere of the Martineaus 
and the De StaHs! With what gracious condescension little 
men continue to lecture and preach on “the female sphere’^ 
and “female duties!” 

This Convention does not undertake the task of protect¬ 
ing woman. It contends that, in government, every individual 
should be endowed, as far as possible, with the means of pro¬ 
tecting himself. This is far more the truth when we deal 
with classes. Every class should be endowed with the power 
to protect itself. Man has hitherto undertaken to settle what 
is best for woman in the way of education and in the matter 
of property. He has settled it for her, that her duties and 
cares are too great to allow her any time to take care of her 
own earnings, or to take her otherwise legitimate share in the 
civil government of the country. He has not undertaken to 
say that the sailor or the soldier, in active service, when he 
returns, from his voyage or his camp, is not free to deposit 
his vote in the ballot-box. He has not undertaken to say 
that the manufacturer, whose factories cover whole townships, 
who is up early and lies down late, who has to borrow the 
services of scores to help him in the management of his vast 
estate,—he does not say that such a man cannot get time to 
study politics, and ought therefore to be deprived of his right 
to vote with his fellow-citizens. He has not undertaken to 


i8 


say that the lawyer may not vote, though his whole time 
is spent in the courts, until he knows nothing of what is 
going on in the streets. O no! But as for woman, her time 
must be all so entirely filled in taking care of her household, 
her cares must be so extensive, that neither those of soldiers 
nor sailors nor merchants can be equal to them; she has not 
a moment to qualify herself for politics! Women cannot be 
spared long enough from the kitchen to put in a vote, though 
Abbott Lawrence can be spared from the counting-house, 
though General Gaines or Scott can be spared from the camp, 
though the Lorings and the Choates can be spared from the 
courts. This is the argument: Stephen Girard cannot go to 
Congress; he is too busy; therefore, no man ever shall. 
Because General Scott has gone to Mexico, and cannot be 
President, therefore no man shall be. Because A. B. is a 
sailor, gone on a whaling voyage, to be absent for three years, 
and cannot vote, therefore no male inhabitant ever shall. 
Logic how profound! how conclusive! Yet this is the exact 
reasoning in the case of woman. Take up the newspapers. 
See the sneers at this movement. 'Take care of the chil¬ 
dren,” “Make the clothes,” “See that they are mended,” 
“See that the parlors are properly arranged.” Suppose we 
grant it all. Are there no women but housekeepers? no 
women but mothers? O yes, many! Suppose we grant 
that the cares of a household are so heavy that they are 
greater than the cares of the president of a college; that he 
who has the charge of some hundreds of youths is less op¬ 
pressed with care than the woman with three rooms and two 
children; that though President Sparks has time for politics, 
Mrs. Brown has not. Grant that, and still we claim that you 
should be true to your theory, and allow to single women 
those rights which she who is the mistress of a household and 
mother of a family has no time to exercise. 


19 


“Let women vote!” cries one. “Why, wives and 
daughters might be Democrats, while their fathers and hus¬ 
bands were Whigs. It would never do. It would produce 
endless quarrels.” And that self-satisfied objector thinks he 
has settled the question. 

But, if the principle be a sound one, why not apply it in a 
still more important instance? Difference of religion breeds 
more quarrels than difference in politics. Yet we allow women 
to choose their own religious creeds, although we thereby run 
the risk of wives being Episcopalians while their husbands are 
Methodists, or daughters being Catholics while their fathers 
are Calvinists. Yet who, this side of Turkey, dare claim that 
the law should compel women to have no religious creed or 
adopt that of their male relatives? Practically, this freedom 
in religion has made no difficulty; and probably equal freedom 
in politics would make as little. 

It is, after all, of little use to argue these social questions. 
These prejudices never were reasoned up, and, my word for 
it, they will never be reasoned down. The freedom of the 
press, the freedom of labor, the freedom of the race in its 
lowest classes, was never argued to success. The moment 
you can get woman to go out into the highways of life, and 
show by active valor what God has created her for, that 
moment this question is settled forever. One solid fact of a 
woman’s making her fortune in trade will teach the male sex 
what woman’s capacity is. I say, therefore, to women, there 
are two paths before you in this reform: one is, take all the 
laws have left you, with a confident and determined hand; 
the other is, cheer and encourage, by your sympathy and aid, 
those noble women who are willing to be the pioneers in this 
enterprise. See that you stand up the firm supporters of 
those bold and fearless ones who undertake to lead their 
sisters in this movement. If Elizabeth Blackwell, who. 


20 


tramping under foot the sneers of the other sex, took her 
maiden reputation in her hand, and walked the hospitals of 
Europe, comes back the accomplished graduate of them, to 
offer her services to the women of America, and to prove that 
woman, equally with man, is qualified to do the duties and 
receive the honors and rewards of the healing art, see to it, 
women, that you greet her efforts with your smiles. Hasten 
to her side, and open your households to her practice. 
Demand to have the experiment fairly tried, before you admit 
that, in your sickness and in your dangers, woman may not 
stand as safely by your bedside as man. If you will but be 
true to each other, on some of these points, it is in the power 
of woman to settle, in a great measure, this question. Why 
ask aid from the other sex at all? Theories are but thin and 
unsubstantial air against the solid fact of woman mingling 
with honor and profit in the various professions and industrial 
pursuits of life. Would women be true to each other, by 
smoothing the pathway of each other’s endeavors, it is in 
their power to settle one great aspect of this question, without 
any statute in such case made and provided. I say, take 
your rights! There is no law to prevent it, in one-half of 
the instances. If the prejudices of the other sex, and the 
supineness of your own prevent it, there is no help for you in 
the statute-books. It is for you but to speak, and the doors 
of all medical hospitals are open for the women by whom you 
make it known that you intend to be served. Let us have 
no separate, and therefore necessarily inferior, schools for 
women. Let us have no poor schools, feebly endowed, where 
woman must go to gather what help she may, from second- 
rate professors, in one branch of a profession. No! Mothers, 
daughters, sisters! say to husband, father, brother, ‘Tf this life 
is dear to you, I intend to trust it, in my hour of danger, to 
a sister’s hand. See to it, therefore, you who are the guides 


21 


of society and heads of those institutions, if you love your 
mother, sister, wife, daughter, see to it that you provide these 
chosen assistants of mine the means to become disciplined and 
competent advisers in that momentous hour, for I will have 
no other.” When you shall say that. Harvard University, 
and every other university, and every medical institution, will 
hasten to open their doors. You who long for the admission 
of women to professional life and the higher ranks of intel¬ 
lectual exertion, up, and throw into her scale this omnipotent 
weight of your determination to be served by her, and by no 
other! In this matter, what you decide is law. 

There is one other light in which this subject is to be 
considered,—the freedom of ballot; and with a few words 
upon that, I will close these desultory remarks. As there is 
no use in educating a human being for nothing, so the thing 
is an impossibility. Horace Mann says, in the letter which 
has been read here, that he intends to write a lecture on 
Woman; and I doubt not he will take the stand which he 
has always done, that she should be book-taught for some 
dozen years, and then retire to domestic life, or the school¬ 
room. Would he give sixpence for a boy who could only 
say that he had been shut up for those years in a school? 
The unfledged youth who comes from college,—what is he? 
He is a man, and has been subjected to seven years’ tutoring; 
but man though he is, until he has walked up and down 
the paths of life, until he receives his education in the 
discipline of the world, in the stimulus of motive, in the 
hope of gain, in the desire of honor, in the love of reputa¬ 
tion, he has got, in nine cases out of ten, no education at all. 
Profess to educate woman for her own amusement! Profess 
to educate her in science, that she may go home and take care 
of her cradle! Teach her the depths of statesmanship and 
political economy, that she may smile sweetly when her hus- 


22 


band comes home! “It is not the education man gets from 
books,” it was well said by your favorite statesman, “but the 
lessons he learns from life and society, that profit him most 
highly.” “L^ monde est le livre des femmes'' Of this book 
you deprive her. You give her nothing but man’s little 
printed primers; you make for her a world of dolls, and then 
complain that she is frivolous. You deprive her of all the 
lessons of practical out-door life; youi deprive her of all the 
stimulus which the good and great of all nations, all societies, 
have enjoyed, the world^s honors, its gold, and its fame, and 
then you cooly ask of her, “Why are you not as well dis¬ 
ciplined as we are?” I know there are great souls who need 
no stimulus but love of truth and of growth, whom mere 
love of labor allures to the profoundest investigations; but 
these are the exceptions, not the rule. We legislate, we 
arrange society, for the masses, not the exceptions. 

Responsibility is one instrument—a great instrument—of 
education, both moral and intellectual. It sharpens the facul¬ 
ties. It unfolds the moral nature. It makes the careless 
prudent, and turns recklessness into sobriety. Look at the 
young wife suddenly left a widow, with the care of her chil¬ 
dren’s education and entrance into life thrown upon her. 
How prudent and sagacious she becomes! How fruitful in 
resources and comprehensive in her views! How much intel¬ 
lect and character she surprises her old friends with! Look 
at the statesman bold and reckless in opposition; how pru¬ 
dent, how thoughtful, how timid, he becomes, the moment 
he is in office and feels that a nation’s welfare hangs on his 
decisions! Woman can never study those great questions 
that interest and stir most deeply the human mind, until she 
studies them under the mingled stimulus and check of this 
responsibility. And until her intellect has been tested by 
such questions, studied under such influences, we shall never 
be able to decide what it is. 

23 


I 


One great reason, then, besides its justice, why we would 
claim the ballot for woman, is this: because the great school 
of this people in the jury-box and the ballot-box. Tocque- 
ville, after travelling in this country, went away with the con¬ 
viction that, valuable as the jury trial was for the investigation 
of facts and defence of the citizens, its value even in these 
respects was no greater than as it was the school of civil edu¬ 
cation open to all the people. The education of the American 
citizen is found in his interest in the debates of Congress,— 
the earnest personal interest with which he seeks to fathom 
political questions. It is when the mind, profoundly stirred 
by the momentous stake at issue, rises to its most gigantic 
efforts, when the great crisis of some national convulsion is at 
hand,—it is then that strong political excitement lifts the 
people up in advance of the age, heaves a whole nation on to 
a higher platform of intellect and morality. Great political 
questions stir the deepest nature of one half the nation; but 
they pass far above and over the heads of the other half. 
Yet, meanwhile, theorists wonder that the first have their 
whole nature, unfolded, and the others will persevere in being 
dwarfed. Now, this great, world-wide, practical, ever-present 
education we claim for woman. Never, until it is granted 
her, can you decide what will be her ability. Deny states¬ 
manship to woman? What! to the sisters of Elizabeth of 
England, Isabella of Spain, Maria Theresa of Austria; ay, 
let me add, of Elizabeth Heyrick, who, when the intellect of 
all England was at fault, and wandering in the desert of a false 
philosophy,—when Brougham and Romilly, Clarkson and 
Wilberforce, and all the other great and philanthropic minds 
of England were at fault and at a dead-lock with the West 
India question and negro slavery,—wrote out, with the states¬ 
manlike intellect of a Quaker woman, the simple yet potent 
charm, — Immediate, Unconditional Emancipation, — 


24 




which solved the problem, and gave freedom to a race! How 
noble the conduct of those men. With an alacrity which 
does honor to their statesmanship, and proves that they recog¬ 
nized the inspired voice when they heard it, they sat down at 
the feet of that woman-statesman, and seven years under her 
instruction did more for the settlement of the greatest social 
question that had ever convulsed England, than had been 
done by a century, of more or less effort, before. O no! 
you cannot read history, unless you read it upside down, 
without admitting that woman, cramped, fettered, excluded, 
degraded as she has been, has yet sometimes, with one ray of 
her instinctive genius, done more to settle great questions 
than all the cumbrous intellect of the other sex has 
achieved. 

It is, therefore, on the ground of natural justice, and on the 
ground again of the highest expediency, and yet again it is 
because woman, as an immortal and intellectual being, has a 
right to all the means of education,—it is on these grounds that 
we claim for her the civil rights and privileges which man enjoys. 

I will not enlarge now on another most important aspect 
of this question, the value of the contemplated change in a 
physiological point of view. Our dainty notions have made 
woman such a hot-house plant, that one-half the sex are 
invalids. The mothers of the next generation are invalids. 
Better that our women, like the German and Italian girls, 
should labor on the highway, and share in the toil of harvest, 
than pine and sicken in the in-door and sedentery routine to 
which our superstition condemns them. But I leave this sad 
topic for other hands. 

One word more. We heard today a very profound and 
eloquent address as to the course which it is most expedient 
for women to pursue in regard to the inadequate remunera¬ 
tion extended to her sex. The woman of domestic life re- 


25 


ceives but about one-third the amount paid to a man for 
similar or far lighter services. The woman of out-door labor 
has about the same. The best woman employments are sub¬ 
ject to a discount of some forty to fifty per cent, on the wages 
paid to males. It is futile, if it were just, to blame individuals 
for this. We have all been burdened long by a common 
prejudice and a common ignorance. The remedy is not to 
demand that the manufacturer shall pay his workmen more, 
that the employer of domestics shall pay them more. It 
is not the capitalist’s fault. We inveigh against the wealthy 
capitalist, but it is not exclusively his fault. It is as much the 
fault of society itself. It is the fault of that timid conser¬ 
vatism, which sets its face like flint against everything new; 
of a servile press, which knows so well, by personal experience, 
how much fools and cowards are governed by a sneer. It is 
the fault of silly women, ever holding up their idea of what is 
^‘lady-like'* as a Gorgon head to frighten their sisters from 
earning bread,—themselves, in their folly, the best answer to 
a weak prejudice they mistake for argument. It is the fault 
of that pulpit which declares it indecorous in woman to labor, 
except in certain occupations, and thus crowds the whole mass 
of working-women into two or three employments, making 
them rivet each other’s chains. Do you ask me the reason 
of the low wages paid for female labor? It is this. There 
are about as many women as men obliged to rely for bread on 
their own toil. Man seeks employment anywhere, and of 
any kind. No one forbids him. If he cannot make a living 
by one trade, he takes another; and the moment any trade 
becomes so crowded as to make wages fall, men leave it, and 
wages will rise again. Not so with woman. The whole mass 
of women must find employment in two or three occupations. 
The consequence is, there are more women in each of these 
than can be employed; they kill each other by competition. 

26 


Suppose there is as much sewing required in a city as one 
thousand hands can do. If the tailors could find only five 
hundred women to sew, they would be obliged to pay them 
whatever they asked. But let the case be, as it usually is, 
that there are five thousand women waiting for that work, 
unable to turn to any other occupation, and doomed to starve 
if they fail to get a share of that; we see at once that their 
labor, being a drug in the market, must be poorly paid for. 
She cannot say, as man would, “Give me so much, or I will 
seek another trade.’’ She must accept whatever is offered, 
and often underbid her sister, that she may secure a share. 
Any article sells cheap, when there is too much of it in the 
market. Woman’s labor is cheap because there is too much 
of it in the market. All women’s trades are overcrowded, 
because they have only two or three to choose from. But 
open to her, now, other occupations. Open to her the studio 
of the artist,—let her enter there; open to her the office 
practice, at least, of the lawyers,—let her go there; open to 
her all in-door trades of society, to begin with, and let women 
monopolize them. Take from the crowded and starved ranks 
of the needlewomen of New York some for the arts of design, 
some for the counter, some to minister in our public libraries, 
some for our public registries, some to keep merchants’ ac¬ 
counts, and some to feel the pulse; and the consequence will 
be, that, like every other independent laborer, like their male 
brethren, they may make their own terms, and will be fairly 
paid for their labor. It is competition in too narrow lists that 
starves women in our cities; and those lists are drawn narrow 
by superstition and prejudice. 

Woman is ground down, by the competition of her sisters, 
to the very point of starvation. Heavily taxed, ill-paid, in 
degradation and misery, is it to be wondered at that she 
yields to the temptation of wealth? It is the same with men; 

27 


and thus we recruit the ranks of vice by the prejudices of 
custom and society. We corrupt the whole social fabric, that 
woman may be confined to two or three employments. How 
much do we suffer through the tyranny of prejudice! When 
we penitently and gladly give to the energy and the intellect 
and the enterprise of woman their proper reward, their appro¬ 
priate employment, this question of w^ages will settle itself; 
and it will never be settled at all until then. 

This question is intimately connected with the great social 
problem,—the vices of cities. You who hang your heads in 
terror and shame, in view of the advancing demoralization of 
modern civilized life, and turn away with horror-struck faces, 
look back now to these social prejudices, which have made 
you close the avenues of profitable employment in the face 
of woman, and reconsider the conclusions you have made! 
Look back, I say, and see whether you are surely right here. 
Come up with us and argue the question, and say whether 
this most artificial delicacy, this childish prejudice, on whose 
Moloch altar you sacrifice the virtue of so many, is worthy 
the exalted worship you pay it. Consider a moment. From 
what sources are the ranks of female profligacy recruited? A 
few mere giddiness hurries to ruin. Their protection would 
be in that character and sound common-sense which a wider 
interest in practical life would generally create. In a few, the 
love of sensual gratification, grown overstrong, because all the 
other powers are dormant for want of exercise, wrecks its 
unhappy victim. The medicine for these would be occupa¬ 
tion, awaking intellect, and stirring their highest energies. 
Give any one an earnest interest in life, something to do, 
something that kindles emulation, and soon the gratification 
of the senses sink into proper subordination. It is idle 
heads that are tempted to mischief: and she is emphatically 
idle half of whose nature is unemployed. Why does man so 

28 


much oftener than woman surmount a few years or months 
of sensual gratification, and emerge into a worthier life? It 
is not solely because the world’s judgment is so much harder 
upon her. Man can immerse himself in business that stirs 
keenly all his faculties, and thus he smothers passion in hon¬ 
orable cares. An ordinary woman, once fallen, has no busy 
and stirring life in which to take refuge, where intellect will 
contend for mastery with passion, and where virtue is braced 
by high and active thoughts. Passion comes back to the 
^‘empty” though “swept and garnished” chambers, bringing 
with him more devils than before. But, undoubtedly, the 
great temptation to this vice is the love of dress, of wealth, 
and the luxuries it secures. Facts will jostle theories aside. 
Whether we choose to acknowledge it or not, there are many 
women, earning two or three dollars a week, who feel that 
they are as capable as their brothers of earning hundreds, if 
they could be permitted to exert themselves as freely. Fret¬ 
ting to see the coveted rewards of life forever forbidden them, 
they are tempted to shut their eyes on the character of the 
means by which a taste, however short, may be gained of the 
wealth and luxury they sigh for. Open to man a fair field 
for his industry, and secure to him its gains, and nine hun¬ 
dred and ninety-nine men out of every thousand will disdain 
to steal. Open to woman a fair field for her industry, let her 
do anything her hands find to do, and enjoy her gains, and 
nine hundred and ninety-nine women out of every thousand 
will disdain to debase themselves for dress or ease. 

Of this great social problem—to cure or lessen the vice 
of cities—there is no other solution, except what this move¬ 
ment offers you. It is, to leave woman to choose her own 
employments for herself, responsible, as we are, to the com¬ 
mon Creator, and not to her fellow-man. I exhort you, 
therefore to look at this question in the spirit in which I 


29 


have endeavored to present it to you. It is no fanciful, no 
superficial movement, based on a few individual tastes, in 
morbid sympathy with tales of individual suffering. It is a 
great social protest against the very fabric of society. It is a 
question which goes down—we admit it, and are willing to 
meet the issue—goes down beneath the altar at which you 
worship, goes down beneath this social system in which you 
live. And it is true—no denying it—that, if we are right, 
the doctrines preached from New England pulpits are wrong; 
it is true that all this affected horror at woman’s deviation 
from her sphere is a mistake,—a mistake fraught with 
momentous consequences. Understand us. We blink no fair 
issue. We thrown down the gauntlet. We have counted the 
cost; we know the yoke and burden we assume. We know 
the sneers, the lying frauds of misstatement and misrepresen¬ 
tation, that await us. We have counted all; and it is but the 
dust in the balance and the small dust in the measure, com¬ 
pared with the inestimable blessing of doing justice to one- 
half of the human species, of curing this otherwise immedicable 
wound, of stopping this overflowing fountain of corruption, at 
the very source of civilized life. Truly, it is the great ques¬ 
tion of the age. It looks all others out of countenance. It 
needs little aid from legislation. Specious objections, after 
all, are not arguments. We know we are right. We only 
ask an opportunity to argue the question, to set it full before 
the people, and then leave it to the intellects and the hearts 
of our country, confident that the institutions under which we 
live, and the education which other reforms have already given 
to both sexes, have created men and women capable of solving 
a problem even more difficult, and meeting a change even more 
radical, than this. 


30 


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